UP govt to waive off agriculture loans of 1.5cr small farmers

VARANASI: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi would take the final call on waiving agriculture loan in the first meeting of his cabinet sometime this week. UP agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi said a list of 1.5 crore farmers has been finalised and sent to the chief minister.

Farm loan waiver was one of the biggest pre-poll promises that the Bharatiya Janata Party had made to the electorate of Uttar Pradesh. In the `Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra' (Pledge for People's Welfare), party's election manifesto, the BJP promised to waive all loans of small and marginal farmers. Talking to reporters, Shahi said the work on preparing the list of beneficiaries had been started immediately after the formation of the government.

Talking about other initiatives to help farmers, Shahi said his department was setting up wheat purchase centres to meet the target of purchasing 80 lakh metric tonnes of wheat from the farmers. These centres, said Shahi, were being set up in a way that farmers do not have to travel more than seven kilometres to sell the produce.

Shahi said the Samajwadi Party government had fixed the target of procuring 40 lakh mt wheat from the farmers but the Yogi government had increased it to double. He said that minimum support price for wheat crop had also been fixed as Rs 1,625 per quintal.

The agriculture minister said the government was exploring the possibility of using closed and unused cold storages to store wheat. The existing warehouses have the capacity of only 40 lakh mt. He said all these exercises were being made to fulfill the promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to double the income of farmers by 2022.